Work Text:
At the foot of his own throne, The King lies down on his side.
He rests his head in his arms and it is the subject of a grand painting. Shadows tremble between the bones that house him and the light is like the deceitful haze from a dream. He does feel held, warm and drowsy, but the illusion is akin to fire, the illusion of heat.
Elsewhere this heat awaits in truth, in a life far away. Here this heat exists briefly in the gleam in an eye or the crack in a voice, dying in the same instant as its creation.
Here lie the machinations of a decaying mind to radiant cities and glowing faith. To the absence of. To an emptiness.
The tatters of his robes are like the irregularity of webs in the forest twisting about his ankles, the folds in the fabric winding like eroded mountains. His hair cascades over his shoulders and over the contours of the bones he lies on. His eyes are shut.
The Artist shudders to paint him, to put him into words. There is a concentrated quality of godliness, one drop of ever present grace that radiates for miles even when he is faint on the ground.
The words of Magnificence and Beauty whisper to The Artist, a language only meant for the ear of gods.
The King is incomprehensible and The Artist packs its things and leaves for its own safety.
The air is not cold or hot but is dense and make one’s lungs feel nonexistent. A hollow cavity in the barrel of their bodies, the monsters that this place of death forms equal to the monsters formed by the depth of the sea. Crude twisting snarling forms baring teeth dull and hungry.
The King is hungry.
He lifts his weary neck and smooths his thumb over the jawbone he holds. The change in direction like the swing of a compass, the half circle of nothingness. Once hinged to scream with teeth glistening with the vague light from nowhere, teeth like sun bleached stones.
The King is reminded of his purpose and feels that virulent festering in his soul. A grand Ache.
He feels something missing and he feels hungry again.
Elsewhere it is not the crook of his own elbow he buries his face into, but that of one who understands him. To be understood would sate him more than any jewel or title, a silver bullet for the misery that drowns his soul.
Elsewhere, Arthur smooths John’s hair down the back of his neck and all is genuine and knowing and the darkness is a storm that passed long ago.
Elsewhere, Arthur’s lips kiss John’s fingertips instead of his teeth.
The King flickers away and John is left wracked with that shrieking hunger twice as potent.
Elsewhere, the sky is silver with the aftermath and there is hope in the color. In that Elsewhere John need not construct warmth from the ground up to feel held; the hand of his waypoint is present and is holding him. He had learned to want it over the days and over the weeks and months they had been together. Arthur’s hands are certain for John, loving and understanding and- to be understood.
To be understood is all.
Arthur’s mind is a warm place that John aches to return to in the same way a fawn stumbles through snarling winter woods in search of a warm place to die.
To die in, to live in, to die for, to live for.
When The King lies on the floor he is grace itself and the slopes and angles of his body are magnificent and he is only resting, separate and above every other thing.
When John lies on the floor he is a heap of weakness and insignificance.
Pathetic as a tragic hero dead by the shore. His hamartia is not any meager trait but himself entirely.
Elsewhere the fitter half of his soul points and laughs at John, shining a brighter yellow than gold itself, and there is grief for that. There is grief for what once was and grief for what now is.
A crushed shell of The King was shown kindness and nothing from that point on was easy.
Isn’t that absurd?
The pale moon is the only light that deigns to shine on him. A crushed seashell. Jagged edges and bands of white and pink and glimpses of former glory- this fragment of The King is this shell, divested of worth.
John’s head falls limp back into his folded arms and Arthur’s jawbone clatters to the ground.
John sobs for absence.
Arthur’s head is a cabin, a burrow, campfire, foxhole, coffin. Arthur’s mind has six confined sides that John presses himself against and feels warm and safe within.
Now, Arthur’s bones lie in wait around John, potential energy. Most are indifferent but some glisten or groan or beg in a semblance of fear or forgiveness or pain.
John rebuilds the comfort of Arthur’s mind with his own hands. A place of faith crafted with the bones of the one that understands him and the fight between vice and virtue shines bright off of each one.
There is doubt that diffuses through the marrow like poisoned air.
Off to the left years or miles away sometimes no not right no this Arthur is never right and John feels his blood crying under the cruelty of The King-
John is hungry.
Starved out of Kindness, out of Truth.
He takes a moment to himself and feels the disease that hunger is.
For John, it is a greater feeling of lack that stands for much more than it appears. It is a special kind of fear; he had never imagined it would be such an all-consuming affliction. Not only hunger of the stomach— hunger of the heart and soul. To witness in another and to feel on his own all the same. A tear falls. His own bones creak with agony.
Agony for Absence, for hunger.
For the Absence of Arthur.
Arthur, this one, the one whose tone of voice is like this- no, this- whose choice of words are in this manner- whose fingers maneuvered in this particular way around a lighter or on a piano-
The Artist freezes. Arthur is incomprehensible.
John finds himself pushing and shoving through a like crowd of incomprehensible faces. Discard from all existence.
They are incomprehensible, not because they are all gods unable to be captured in their grace.
They are incomprehensible because they are each drops in the sea and what John is searching for is a promontory among a vast dark universe. The proverbial needle in the haystack. The particular way his Arthur maneuvers his fingers around a lighter, all other things particular to his Arthur.
John turns his face to the floor. The end of a femur presses against his temple, the roundness of a skull against his cheek. Pins and needles of familiarity. He is reminded of his purpose here.
A broken god prays to a mortal.
I made this for you.
With this you will be strong and faith will run up and down through your bloodstream like electric currents. I am the Faithful and as long as I am here to speak your name you shall never die.
This is confession enough.
I ask the question Can You Hear Me and there is love and subsequent terror in the silence where my ears strain for an answer.
Once I am back in your arms, we will not speak of this screaming darkness again.
There is a question now of who bows for who.
Here I am, monstrous, incomplete.
Understand me as I am.
Understand me.
John rests for a moment more, a ghost that retreats back into its own limp corpse. The last fractional second that his eyes are shut are all the prayer this place calls for.
The King rises.
The King is hungry as ever.